Finke: Battle looms in fight on violence

By DOUG FINKE of the Springfield State Journal-Register
Posted Jul. 12, 2014 at 9:47 PM

It’ll be a showdown of sorts next week when the Legislative Audit Commission meets and talks about whether to go ahead with further hearings on Gov. Pat Quinn’s badly botched anti-violence program, despite federal prosecutors asking members to hold off for 90 days.

Democrats on the evenly divided commission would rather the whole issue go away until after the election to avoid even more embarrassment to Quinn. At the same time, they don’t want to come off as stonewalling the commission’s proceedings for the politically expedient reason of protecting a fellow Democrat.

Republicans, meanwhile, know they’ve got a great political issue and have every reason to keep it before the public in the months leading up to the election. Their challenge is to avoid coming off as political grandstanders who are more interested in doing damage to Quinn than in uncovering the facts of the program.

That job was made harder last week when the Department of Justice asked that the hearings be postponed while federal prosecutors proceed with their own investigation. Now if the Republicans insist on forging ahead, they very much risk making it all look political and discrediting the work done so far by the Audit Commission.

Wrestling with pay

Last week, Rep. Katherine Cloonen, D-Kankakee, introduced a bill to return unpaid furlough days to state lawmakers for two years.

When lawmakers wrapped up the state budget this year, they dropped the requirement that’s been in place for the last five years that they take 12 unpaid furlough days a year. It means at least $3,100 more in take-home pay for each of them.

The rationale was that the courts last year ruled Quinn couldn’t cut lawmakers’ pay. Thus, if the governor couldn’t do it, neither could lawmakers through furlough days.

Given that, it looks doubtful that Cloonen’s bill will go anywhere. But wouldn’t it be fun to see lawmakers grappling with that bill during the veto session, when they also might debate whether to make the income tax hike permanent?

Don’t hold your breath

Last week, workers took down an ugly, weathered wooden fence that’s been in the northwest corner of the Capitol grounds for the last couple of years at least.

It would seem to be another indication that no further rehab work will be going on anytime soon in the Capitol. The area inside the fence has been used to store construction equipment and replacement ventilation equipment while the state replaced heating, ventilation and air conditioning and other systems in parts of the Capitol.

Page 2 of 2 - Quinn vetoed $250 million from the budget that was to pay for further Capitol upgrades. Critics immediately branded it a phony cut because it involves money that can’t be used to pay ongoing state expenses. Moreover, there hasn’t been any engineering work done on the next phase of the project, meaning it’s months, if not years, away from happening.

Money for the Stratton

By the way, there’s another project in that capital bill that Quinn didn’t touch.

There’s $258 million set aside to either completely overhaul or replace the Stratton Office Building, that thing next to the Capitol that looks like it was designed by Soviet architects on a bad day. It’s occupied by lawmakers and staffers and a sprinkling of people from state agencies. The building is a dump and is not on the list of Springfield tourist attractions.

The Stratton replacement project has been part of the capital budget for years, but it’s never gotten underway. There’s always been some concern about how the public would feel about the state spending big bucks on what would amount to a legislative office building.

Still, money to fix or repair the Stratton remains in the budget while money to make upgrades to a genuinely historic building that does draw thousands of visitors is cut. Go figure.

DOUG FINKE is the state government reporter for the Springfield State Journal-Register Contact him at (217) 788-1527 or email doug.finke@sj-r.com. Follow him on Twitter @DougFinkeSJR.